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Talk:Assault Cannon/@comment-25513489-20141008050304/@comment-4391208-20141009135414
Well, no doubt the visual reference is there with rifle + underslung grenade launcher, but the round size parallels the 105mm > 120mm upgrade with MBTs IRL. As for within the universe, the 120mm standardized size was first set by the US with their weapon systems, which the UN later made into a combat standard for ease of production. As far as I know, things like Soviet battle tanks have no changes, and presumably still use the 152mm size, etc. Outside of a handful of very special variants, none of them are explicitly specced for carrying heavy armament sets and it's a given that missile boxes will weigh the TSF down, hence the shield for additional defence. Heavy and Light aren't just weight classifiers either; they're terms to describe a TSF's endurance, performance, construction/combat resilience, etc. No doubt an F-15 weighs more, and can carry more than an F-16, but what of the Type-94, which, while not being classed as heavy or light, has a whooping 12x 36mm magazines and 4x 120mm magazines, several times the F-15's own 2x 36mm OR its 4x 120mm; and which has to dump half of its ammunition load to carry a knife? Or what of the Su-47, which, while being a "heavy", is probably miles ahead of the Type-94 in maneuverability; yet carries only the stock standard four rifles? They're first and foremost hybrid vehicles for anti-BETA combat meant to fulfill the need for high-speed low-altitude air travel and ground travel capability over ALL terrain types, that being their justification for giant robots. So they would need legs, arms, and appropriate armoring. They can carry loads, but they're not "load-bearing machines", not beyond the weapon loadout they were specced for, and while they can carry containers, that's not a capability evaluated in combat, when the air is saturated with Laser fire. A lot of their mass goes into armor, fuel, etc; all balanced out to fit their role without negative impact. During the start of the BETA wars the WS-16A was a 20mm/105mm system, and the WS-16B quickly up-scaled that to 36mm/120mm. Since there is no specific lineart for the WS-16A I can't really say that the upscale was internals-only, but even then, that occurred at a time when the worldwide military industry was far more than its 2001 state in UL/Alt. Come 30 years since and it's a wonder they're still functioning at all, much less keeping armories and hangars stocked with munitions and parts. Leading from that, most of the Assault Cannons are mentioned to have specific balance attribute(s) to complement the TSFs that they're used by; so if a larger round size upsets that balance, then it requires the redesign of said weapon, the re-deployment of said weapon across the armed forces that use them, the manufacture of the new round size, and the storage/recall/disposal of said older round size and/or weapons designed to use that older round size, and the wall-banging task of disposal of said weapons; it would defeat the purpose of a standardized round size if you were to redeploy them to the frontlines, and if you say that they can still be used in rear line duties, then how would they be maintained? Or would the pool of usable weapons dwindle for spare parts until the new weapon design can catch up, if, ignoring the effects of loss on the frontlines, it does at all? The rounds aren't like TSFs, or MBTs, or warships, which have proven time and time again to have room for much-needed improvement. As for the extra lethality, does it justify a separate round size? Multiple 120mm may be needed to kill a Fort, but to restructure an entire industry to produce, retrofit, and use a third round size isn't something that's easily affordable this late into a war of attrition, and swapping round types isn't some panel button option that pilots can use. Sweeping through the gaps of a Destroyer wave charge and exploiting their exposed rears with pylon-mounted guns is an accepted and standardized tactic used by all TSF units. If the Destroyers aren't even considered priority targets by the pilots, why would the industrial base or the military leaders even entertain the thought for larger/more lethal round types for the 120mm? It's not as if they don't have specific extra anti-Fort options; apart from a 120mm barrage, another is the BWS-3, which, despite being a sword, of all things, has steadily maintained its popularity, and as multiple instance across the series has proven, the total round expenditure to kill a Fort would equal to about one 120mm magazine, plus-minus one or two rounds; the vast majority of BETA strains are easily killed with the 36mm. The Forts don't even appear in numbers close to that of any of the other strains. The 36mm/120mm combo has been killing BETA well enough even before the first 3rd-generation TSF was online; why redesign the "wheel", outside of materials/delivery method? Shouldn't redesigning the "car" for improved performance of the baseline "even higher survivability, maneuverability, cost-effectiveness, and reactivity in combat, and someday proper shielding/laser countermeasures" goal be the bigger priority, especially since a Laser-class, while fragile enough to be over-penetrated by a single 36mm round, is capable of killing even the most advanced 3rd-generation TSFs in a single hit; the same kill-rate effectiveness it has maintained against all vehicle types, whether tank, aircraft, or TSF? Forts and Destroyers are but a fraction of the threats on a battlefield, and their effective range is a miniscule fraction of a Laser/Heavy Laser's. There are entirely different sets of problems to a new weapon for a new round type. How would you deploy a larger weapon? Would it be an add-on to existing Assault Cannon types? It would encounter issues as stated in the previous paragraph, resulting in much ado over a redesign of an old system. A new weapon model? If a new weapon model, so when the Forts, already large targets capable of being sniped down from far enough away, are dealt with, you would have a TSF with one weapon less to deal with the other species, especially since now the TSF is in the middle of the mess with enemies on all sides. What about Laser-hunting? Even if the new weapon has grapeshot, how does it handle at all? Yui's test with the EML-99X (a new weapon type) revealed that being caught in CQC with the launcher was a situation best avoided altogether. Not the best option for Laser-hunting, then, reducing its roles to the frontlines only. How would the weapon be redesigned to avoid that? The Mk. 57 support gun is a re-imagination of artillery support for already large-scale fires, intended to engage targets at the maximum distance; artillery for the tanks, brought to artillery for the giant robots. The guns are not just Fort-killers, but also work in a variety of roles, specifically made to fit the "retake the continent" doctrine the Europeans envisioned. In a sense, your request is already answered, since the Mk. 57 had spread to the Eastern Front by the way of the Japanese after 2001. After all, prior to that, when everyone was on the edge of their seats just trying to keep the shoreline-based Far East Defence Line intact, who would have the time to design just a small-scale upgrade project for a weapons system that no one has had complaints with? Since they're already engaging at the shorelines, why not just use battleship cannons? Europe is a special case; the shoreline surrounds it. The Far East Front is another case; in the locations where the Japanese and Russians are engaging the BETA, the shoreline to subordinate to land positions. There are no Lasers based in Russian Hives all across the greater part of Siberia; the European Hives, not so, and ships venturing in close will get Swiss Cheese'd, mobile artillery won't be able to be deployed or be able to escape in time, so on and so forth. Hence the Mk. 57; not so for the Japanese and Soviets, who have, in the first place, taken entirely different approaches; the Japanese, the stabilization of production of an advanced TSF platform (Type-94), and then the struggle to upgrade said platform to include heavy weaponry (Type-94-1C and the EML-99X, later fulfilled by the Type-04 and Mk. 57.). The Soviets, oriented towards CQC, with successive variants of the Su-series being improved in that regard. Their only known ranged option? The MiG-31 with its missile systems. So there is a larger round. Yes, it holds a larger payload, and thus requires more force to launch. You yourself said that TSF weapon systems may go for low recoil systems; when you likely only have one pass, or even less than that, one chance, to kill a group of Lasers before they shred the entire squadron, wouldn't a launcher with a stability guarantee be better than round sizes? If, IF, 120mm is the threshold size that TSFs can wield without losing accuracy if they don't slow down for their computer targeting systems to catch up, then at what cost would it be justified to have to slow down, fire the larger round, and, in the split second taken for the round to hit the clutch of Laser-class, the TSFs are burned through by one wave of Laser fire? You yourself did say that "I love this series and its dogged determination to make mecha relevant to military technology". That is what is happening; the round size of a weapon is not just determined by power or even the size of the platform carrying the weapon; sustainability of production, the cost/production balance, the effect of wear and tear on the weapon by using this round size, the logistics of bringing this round size to the front, the logistics of producing this round size, etc etc, are all factors. The Schwerer Gustav, while impressive, is considered a bygone relic; on its wikipedia page you can see a picture of its size comparison with an SS-21 mobile launcher, which, at a fraction of its size and mass, is capable of steel rain at twice the range and with less than half the maintenance required; because, using a different delivery system with a different warhead, the SS-21 is a missile system, and has no barrel to get stuck with soot! Modern artillery can achieve the same range as the S.G. at less than half the barrel length, and, with the right information support, no doubt pose at least the same threat to the Maginot Line as the S.G. was supposed to do, once again at half the cost, half the logistics effort, and with much less manpower. One can argue that if the S.G. had the same advantages of modern technology (GPS, advanced materials engineering, etc) it could bring its performance to new heights, but that just cuts into the issue of cost to performance ratio due to the large costs of a hyper-specced unit compared to numerous smaller contemporaries that cna fit a wider variety of situations and roles. And that's not even getting into physical constrains, the same aspect that makes hyper-specced units so maintenance-intensive, the main aspect that is responsible for killing military projects as much as budget cuts do (e.g. superheavy tanks, for starters.). I still maintain that "Bigger is better" depends on what you are using to deploy your "bigger". It's not completely out of consideration, but one needs to consider more points than just "It's bigger, so we'll put big weapons on it". Just because something can be built doesn't mean that it should always be done. Need leads, and the industry will follow, or be left behind with severe consequences; and the military is not exempt from this rule, as you probably already know just by looking at a certain country's list of military engagements in a certain continental region directly across the Atlantic... _____________________________________________________ That is the in-universe explanation anyways, and a lot of it is just educated guesses because it's either not mentioned or not translated. Outside of it, who knows? The art has always been on-off; words seldom match images, the most famous example being the XAMWS-24's 30%/20% increase in 36mm/120mm capacities. Why didn't they just mention 600/1 round(s) extra for the guns/cannons? Beats me. Then there's the An-225's design clash with their capability to mount Re-entry Vehicles; if a TSF were to be ejected rearwards (again, how they eject has never been specified, but from how military-styled the action is geared towards, would ejecting forward make any sense?), they would hit the An-225's empennage, with the worst-case scenario being shearing off half of the aircraft's tail section. I mean I could nitpick a lot of things, but that's not the point, and barrels wider than their specified round diameter seems to be a small issue compared to those. Supposed discrepancies don't make me like the series any less. Besides, speaking of "autism", well, if you ask me, there's no point to bother with fiction if one's not going to get invested in it to some degree... might as well just stick to newspapers, and dump the comics/entertainment section while they're at it.